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middle east law and governance
10 (2018) 160-184
brill.com/melg
Site of Resistance or Apparatus of Acquiescence?
Tactics at the Bakery
José Ciro Martínez
University of Cambridge
jcm88@cam.ac.uk
Abstract
This article explores the importance and impact of a set of actions through which bak-
ers manipulate laws and regulations that seek to organize and regulate how they do
business. It builds on eighteen months of fieldwork conducted in Jordan, twelve of
which were spent working in three different bakeries in the capital, Amman. Moving
away from the idea that public policies are simply imposed, the article looks in detail
at the social relations through which they are enacted. By honing in on the bakery, and
examining arrangements between bakery owners, workers, consumers and ministerial
employees, it illuminates modes of political agency that escape conventional binaries
of domination/resistance, state/society and legality/illegality. I argue against seeing
these practices as easily categorized forms of resistance or frivolous acts of corruption.
Nor are they simply reinforcements of hegemonic control. Instead, ‘tactics’ at the bak-
ery subvert the order of things to serve other ends. Foregrounding them in this analysis
seeks not only to challenge views of power relations as strictly binary but to elucidate
some of the ways in which citizens inhabit and engage with the neoliberal and authori-
tarian logics that pervade everyday life in Jordan.
Keywords
Jordan – tactics – resistance – subsidies – food politics – neoliberalism – comparative
politics
© josé martinez, ���8 | doi 10.1163/18763375-01002002
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Site of Resistance or Apparatus of Acquiescence? 161
At four-thirty in the morning, Hani ambles down the hill from his house in Jabal
B, a poor neighborhood in East Amman.1 A five-minute walk takes him to his
bakery. He turns on the lights, takes a quick glance at some paperwork, jump-
starts the flour mixer and fires up the oven. By five, his workers have joined
him. They drop their coats and belongings in the backroom and begin the day’s
labor. One works the flour mixer, two prepare dough and three bake bread and
ready it for sale. The same six men will work until nine at night, in two shifts
interspersed by a two-hour lunch break. Hani spends most of the day at the
cash register chain smoking. From his perch, he barks orders at the workers,
greets customers amicably and sorts out the minutiae that make the business
run: salt procurement, payment of electricity bills, taxation matters and the
purchase of subsidized flour. It is the last of these tasks that consumes most of
his time and causes the majority of his unease. The Ministry of Industry, Trade
and Supply (moits) closely regulates the subsidized bread business. moits
intervenes in all steps of the supply chain: it purchases wheat on international
markets, oversees the production and delivery of discounted flour and regu-
lates the price of subsidized bread sold to consumers. Bakeries both big and
small such as Hani’s are given flour quotas which must, by law, be used exclu-
sively for the production of standard khubz ‘arabī (Arab—or pita—bread) that
is sold at 0.16 jd (0.23 usd) per kilogram.2 Ministry employees set these quotas,
which guarantee a 7% profit for bakers, through a complex and confidential
formula based on a bakery’s potential output, the owner’s reputation and lo-
cal demand. Once set, the quotas are very hard to change, especially when an
increase is requested. moits employees, distraught by a thriving black market
that drains government coffers, suspect bakery owners may re-sell their dis-
counted flour or use it to make sweets, cakes and fancier varieties of bread, two
common practices that are legally prohibited.
Three bakeries operate in Jabal B. One is smaller than Hani’s, with just two
employees. Another closes at 3 in the afternoon, following the lunch rush. For
local residents, many of whom work in the wealthier neighborhoods of West
Amman, Hani’s outlet is the last place where they can buy bread for dinner.
For others, it is the easiest place to obtain provisions for an early breakfast. The
bakery’s proximity to the neighborhood mosque as well as its long opening
hours contributes to its popularity. Hani sells only subsidized khubz ‘arabī. He
prefers not to prepare other, non-subsidized wheat-based products from which
other bakeries derive most of their profits. His business practices target the
1 In order to preserve the anonymity of my informants and interviewees, whose ostensibly
illegal activities I will describe herein, I have used pseudonyms for people and unspecified
designations for the districts in which I conducted fieldwork: Jabal B and Jabal C.
2 As of February 2018, this price has been increased.
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162 Martínez
local customer base: “Most families in this neighborhood are very poor. They
may eat lamb or chicken once a week, they buy sweets in the balad (down-
town) for holidays, but they eat bread with almost every meal,” he reasons.
Since 2012, Jabal B has witnessed a sizeable influx of Syrian refugees, attracted
by cheap rents and the neighborhood’s proximity to a major public transporta-
tion hub.3 Hani estimates that his customer base has grown by 15,000 people,
yet his bakery has not been given a commensurate increase in its flour quota.
This does not endanger his business—profits on subsidized bread sold from
his quota remain steady at 7%—but it does threaten the routines, rhythms and
subsistence of his customers; under his current flour quota subsidized bread
provisions would be depleted by three or four in the afternoon, he estimates.
Faced with this conundrum, Hani commits a crime. Once a week, he meets a
ministerial employee and pays him a bribe that ensures supplementary deliv-
eries of subsidized flour. Although arrangements such as these are frequently
described as ‘corruption’ or a ‘failure of governance,’ they are better understood
as ‘tactics’ that shape livelihoods in the city of Amman.
This article is based on a study of the Jordanian bread subsidy. It builds on
eighteen months of fieldwork conducted in the country, twelve of which were
spent working in three different bakeries in the capital, Amman.4 Here, I will
explore the importance and impact of a set of actions through which bakers
manipulate laws and regulations that seek to organize how they do business. A
close study of the arrangements amongst bakery owners, workers, consumers
and ministerial employees seeks to illuminate modes of political agency that
escape conventional binaries of domination/resistance, state/society and le-
gality/illegality that dominate the literature in comparative politics. I identify
and analyze such arrangements by honing in on place. Specifically, this article
examines the bakery as a salient sphere of everyday life, a crucial site in which
state power, urban livelihoods and creative tactics intersect. Neither a hermeti-
cally sealed biophysical reality nor autonomous site of the subaltern, the bak-
ery is a politically charged assemblage that is simultaneously conceived, lived
and imagined.5 By conceptualizing place in this fashion, the article seeks to
3 For more on how welfare provision in Jordan intersects with emergency aid for Syrian refu-
gees, see José Ciro Martínez, “Bread is Life: The Intersection of Welfare Politics and Emer-
gency Aid in Jordan,” Middle East Report, 44:272 (2014): 30–35.
4 During this time, I regularly participated in daily ‘office’ routines, usually during the early
morning or late afternoon hours and always with the permission of bakery owners.
5 What, in Lefebvrian terms, would amount to l’espace conçu, véçu and perçu. For more on
Lefebvre’s “tantalizingly vague” triad, see Andrew Merrifield, “Place and Space: A Lefebvrian
Reconciliation,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 18:4 (1993): 516–531.
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assess the constellation of situated everyday practices through which citizens
navigate crosscutting fields of power. I argue against seeing these practices as
easily categorized forms of resistance or frivolous acts of corruption or con-
sumerism. Nor are they simply reinforcements of hegemonic control. Through
the art of trickery, disruption and ingenuity, ‘tactics’ at the bakery subvert the
order of things to serve other ends. Although the politics of these actions may
be unclear, their tactical nature is both recognizable and effective. Foreground-
ing them in this analysis seeks not only to problematize prevalent dichotomies
but to illuminate some of the ways in which citizens inhabit and engage with
the neoliberal and authoritarian logics that pervade everyday life in Jordan.
(Dis)Locating Grids of Rule
In the process of providing bread to its citizens, the Jordanian state must cal-
culate and rationalize that which it distributes and those who receive it. To
render this arena of intervention both technical and improvable, humans and
things must be bounded, mapped, characterized and documented.6 Foucault
terms the broader process in which such developments are enmeshed as the
“governmentalization of the state”7—“the process by which the juridical and
administrative apparatus of the polity come to incorporate the disparate are-
nas of rule concerned with the government of the population.”8 In Jordan as
elsewhere, reference grids, censuses, and surveys seek to construct an abstract
field of observation through which the governmental gaze can assess accurate
information and travel without impediment.9 These “inscription devices”10
make information both knowable and quantifiable, they “render visible the
space over which government is to be exercised.”11 By reducing the messiness
of place and practice through standards and codifications, labels and texts,
6 Tania Murray Li, The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of
Politics (Durham, nc: Duke University Press, 2007), 126.
7 Michel Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect, ed. Graham Burchell, Colin
Gordon and Peter Miller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 103.
8 Mitchell Dean, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (Sage: London, 1999), 2.
9 Matthew G. Hannah, Governmentality and the Mastery of Territory in Nineteenth-Century
America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 124; James C. Scott, Seeing like a
State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1998).
10 Bruno Latour, “The Powers of Association,” The Sociological Review, 32:S1 (1984): 264–280.
11 Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), 36.
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state actors can define problems, measure resources and specify sectors for
intervention.12 Yet the success of such efforts is far from certain. Forms of
knowledge and technique are not the sole source of these failures; there are
many reasons for such ruptures.13 Here I want to focus on the severe limits
on governmental programs posed by their target—the dynamic forces of so-
cial life. Whether it be humans, things, environment or space, this “obdurate
terrain” presents important constraints on that which governmental interven-
tions seek to accomplish.14 Discrepancies between ambitions and outcomes
traverse landscapes of rule; intended outcomes are never guaranteed.
Henri Lefebvre’s insights on the production of abstract space are productive
for examining such discrepancies. His work considerably expanded the scope
of Marxist sociology, and served to put the production of space at the fore-
front of considerations of capitalism and state power. Lefebvre posits that dur-
ing the transition to capitalist modernity, the state apparatus produces a new
form of socio-spatial organization, one characterized by its “ ‘abstract’ quality.”
He terms this “abstract space,” a conceptualization that sees space as a solid,
measurable substance, “an objectified, reified thing” (italics in original).15 Plan-
ners, engineers, developers and technocrats of all colors are crucial to abstract
space’s circulation. It entails the classification and partitioning of political-
economic life into clearly delineated jurisdictions that can be regulated and
controlled. By codifying space into legible grids, characterized by fixity and ho-
mogeneity, abstract space attempts to inscribe ‘rational’ economic calculation
in the spheres of production and exchange, as well as comprehensive control
in the realm of statecraft.16 Such dynamics can be seen in the Jordanian gov-
ernment’s bread subsidy.
12 Peter Burke, Social History of Knowledge: From Gutenberg to Diderot (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 2000); Thomas Lemke, Foucault, Governmentality and Critique (Boulder: Paradigm
Publishers, 2011).
13 Thomas Biebricher, “Critical Theories of the State: Governmentality and the Strategic-
Relational Approach,” Constellations, 20:3 (2013): 388–405.
14 Tanya Murray Li, “Governmentality,” Anthropologica, 49:2 (2007): 277. Foucault similarly
emphasizes how life constantly escapes integration into the techniques of power that
attempt to govern it. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. An Introduction. Volume 1
(New York: Vintage Books, 1990), 143.
15 Daniel Neep, “State-Space beyond Territory: Wormholes, Gravitational Fields, and Entan-
glement,” Journal of Historical Sociology 30.3 (2017): 475.
16 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Black-
wel, 1991), 370. Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden, “Henri Lefebvre on State, Space, Territory,”
International Political Sociology, 3:4 (2009): 358.
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The Ministry of Industry, Trade and Supply (moits), which is charged with
running the welfare program, seeks to organize, manage, standardize and con-
trol all aspects of the subsidized bread business. It fixes the country’s yearly
wheat consumption, regulates the production of millers, supervises flour
deliveries, sets profit margins for production and determines the nutritional
needs of every single one of the country’s neighborhoods. It then uses this in-
formation to issue licenses to bakers, and establish their allocation of subsi-
dized flour. Routine inspections of sanitary conditions, flour extraction rates
and bread quality seek to ensure that regulations are observed and that stan-
dard khubz ‘arabī is sold at the price of sixteen qirsh per kilogram. These efforts
are more than public health or welfare monitoring measures. By constructing a
governable grid out of complex irregularities, histories and practices, moits’s
meticulous set of calculating practices, procedures and techniques seek to re-
inforce the state’s logic of socio-spatial control over humans and things.17 Lefe-
bvre was hardly a proponent of this shift. He remained sharply critical of the
technocratic and apolitical veneer through which abstract space was deployed
and circulated, always emphasizing the inherently political nature of spatial
organization. Crucially, Lefebvre’s analysis suggests that projects of state ra-
tionalization are not only fragmentary but also contested.18 Whereas the state
apparatus attempts to remake space into ordered diagrams and governable
grids, diverse social actors strive to create, preserve and expand places of social
reproduction and grassroots control.19 The deployment of regulatory strategies
does not necessarily imply their ultimate triumph. And it is the spontaneity
of everyday life that remains a primary arena for prospective disruption, “the
starting point for the realization of the possible.”20
Practice and Politics in Everyday Life
Michel de Certeau’s work shares with Lefebvre an enduring interest in the ev-
eryday. While from a far different philosophical tradition, his examination of
17 Empirical studies have shown the variety of administrative, legal and technical practices
that permit the state apparatus to construct and disseminate abstract space. For an excel-
lent summary, see Neep, “State Space Beyond Territory.”
18 Though cast through a familiar resistance/domination dichotomy, Lefebvre’ Production of
Space (1991) makes clear how everyday life is imbued with power, never neatly responding
to the ordered diagrams and static distributions of the state apparatus.
19 Elden and Brenner, “Henri Lefebvre,” 367.
20 Henri Lefebvre, as quoted in Andrew Merrifield, Henri Lefebvre: A Critical Introduction
(New York: Routledge, 2006), 10.
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routine practices seeks to illustrate how users of space creatively manipulate
mechanisms of discipline and homogenization. In The Practice of Everyday
Life, de Certeau dissects the ways in which subjects of power play with the
social order by using the very products and tools that order imposes on them,
neither submitting to the demands of hegemonic forces nor confronting them
head on. He conceptualizes the varied practices through which citizens and
users reappropriate spaces organized and imposed by techniques of power as
“tactics.”21 In so doing, he extends the domain of politics beyond formal in-
stitutions and collective mobilization to the diverse ways of operating within
“the practice of everyday life.”22 Yet crucially, de Certeau’s story is not one of
revolution or grand upheaval, but of stubbornness, obstinacy and creativity.
Throughout his work, he stresses the innumerable constraints and the con-
fined objectives of everyday practices. When “order is tricked by an art,” it is
often done without any illusion that this order will change any time soon: “it
is a maneuver ‘within an enemy’s field of vision’ and within enemy territory.”23
Bereft of the means to challenge a social order, tactics may deflect power or re-
direct its strictures, but always without leaving its field of operation.
Although a corpus of research on the politics of everyday life, largely inspired
by James Scott,24 has drawn our attention to the various mechanisms through
which subaltern and working classes engage with their socio-economic cir-
cumstances, these works far too frequently rely on dichotomous categories of
domination and resistance. In the Middle East, everyday practices amongst
popular classes have frequently been portrayed as defensive coping mecha-
nisms or contentious acts of defiance that function as the building blocks of
collective mobilization.25 The recent Arab uprisings do seem to indicate that
21 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1984), xiv. For useful accounts of the difference between strategy and tactics, see Ian Bu-
chanan, Michel de Certeau: Cultural Theorist (London: Sage, 2000), 86–108; Ben Highmore,
Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2002), 145–174.
22 de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, xxiv; Donald S. Moore, “Subaltern Struggles and
the Politics of Place: Remapping Resistance in Zimbabwe’s Eastern Highlands,” Cultural
Anthropology, 13:3 (1998): 350.
23 de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 26 and 37.
24 James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Resistance (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1985); James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Tran-
scripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).
25 Reinoud Leenders and Steven Heydemann, “Popular Mobilization in Syria: Opportunity
and Threat, and the Social Networks of the Early Risers,” Mediterranean Politics 17:2 (2012):
139–159; Charles Tripp, The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Sophie Richter-Devroe (2011) “Palestin-
ian Women’s Everyday Resistance: Between Normality and Normalisation,” Journal of
I nternational Women’s Studies, 12:2 (2011): 32–46; Salwa Ismail, “Urban Subalterns in the
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these practices may have the potential to “become infrastructures of action—
foundations upon which resistance in the form of collective action can be
built,”26 but their importance is not exhausted by such possibilities. Time in
the field allowed me to observe seemingly mundane actions that both express
dissent but also employ calculated accommodation, that seek autonomy from
oppressive governmental regulations while also demanding support from a
beneficent state. They are neither revolutionary nor an indication of passivity.
Of course, opposition and subversion are involved, but so are improvisation,
negotiation with authorities and forms of “quiet encroachment”27 through
which ordinary people attempt to improve their lives.28 By highlighting the
routines, contestations and social relations in which these everyday practices
are enmeshed, I seek to attend to the various ways in which citizens navigate
the warrens of capitalist exchange and the grids of authoritarian rule, without
succumbing to the “romance of resistance”29 or sanitizing the politics of sub-
alterns.30 Melding Lefebvre’s meditations on abstract space with de Certeau’s
notion of tactics, and drawing upon their shared concern with the everyday, I
contend that, at the bakery, Jordanians encounter and confound the state ap-
paratus’ regulatory techniques while establishing alternative modes of togeth-
erness and consumption that make precarity livable.31
Situating Tactics
Prior to the onset of structural adjustment measures in 1989, social welfare
in Jordan was composed of an aggregate of public policies common to many
Arab Revolutions: Cairo and Damascus in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Studies
in Society and History 55:4 (2013): 865–894.
26 Salwa Ismail, Political Life in Cairo's New Quarters: Encountering the Everyday State (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), xxiii.
27 Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Palo Alto: Stan-
ford University Press, 2010).
28 Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria, The Slow Boil: Street Food, Rights and Public Space in Mumbai
(Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2016), 105.
29 Lila Abu-Lughod, “The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power through
Bedouin Women,” American Ethnologist, 17:1 (1990): 41–55.
30 Sherry B. Ortner, “Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal,” Comparative
Studies in Society and History, 37:1 (1995): 173–193.
31 Judith Butler, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly (Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2015), 218; Amira Mittermaier, “Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: The Egyptian
Uprising and a Sufi Khidma,” Cultural Anthropology, 29:1 (2014): 54–79; Laleh Khalili, “The
Politics of Pleasure: Promenading on the Corniche and Beachgoing,” Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space 34.4 (2016): 583–600.
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“protective welfare states.”32 A curious fusion of Keynesian techniques em-
ployed for conservative ends, the system sought to acquiesce both labor and
business while bolstering the Hashemite regime’s legitimacy. Generous public
employment for East Bankers and universal consumer protections in the form
of price supports and subsidies worked to shield families from labor market
risk and economic downturns, all while lowering labor costs.33 These policies
expanded substantially during the late 1970s. In addition to salary increases,
government employees were given access to credit, health insurance and gen-
erous pensions. The population as a whole had access to basic commodities
administered and regulated by the Ministry of Supply, formally established in
1974. Subsidized goods included: wheat, sugar, petroleum, powdered milk, tea,
cigarettes and coffee. Over the next two decades, access to geopolitical and
oil rents coupled with the Hashemite regime’s patrimonial tendencies led the
state apparatus to become the main provider of crucial subsistence goods for
many citizens. Although the country’s embrace of interventionist measures
was not inspired by a coherent development model or Arab socialist ideology
as in Egypt and Syria, welfare policies were slowly woven into a complex field
of informal expectations amongst Jordanians who, criticisms notwithstanding,
frequently refer to this period (1972–1988) as one characterized by job guaran-
tees, access to affordable education and relative social equality.
The shift towards neoliberal economic policies engendered by the country’s
debt crisis and the subsequent implementation of structural adjustment poli-
cies decreased welfare expenditures. Beginning in 1989, hiring in the public
sector declined, except for the armed forces, and subsidies on most goods were
eliminated. Price increases levied on fuel, residential water and various food-
stuffs were enacted just as civil service pay was frozen,34 making it increasingly
difficult for government employees to deal with inflation, which was rising by
30 to 50 percent at the time.35 Spending reductions in other social programs
resulted in reduced access to education, health care, and affordable housing.
These changes did not occur without social unrest or vociferous public pro-
tests. Increases in fuel prices in 1989 sparked immediate riots in the southern
city of Ma‘an, which quickly spread throughout the country. The removal of
bread subsidies in 1996 ignited unrest in Karak, a town once considered a
32 For more on protective welfare states, see Nita Rudra, “Welfare States in Developing
Countries: Unique or Universal?” Journal of Politics, 69:2 (2007): 378–396.
33 Anne Marie Baylouny, Privatizing Welfare in the Middle East: Kin Mutual Aid Associations
in Jordan and Lebanon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 168.
34 “Jordan: New Government,” Oxford Analytica Daily Brief, 2 May 1989.
35 Baylouny, Privatizing Welfare, 55.
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bastion of monarchical support.36 Those who fought to defend the provision-
ist status quo ante in the face of austerity measures imposed from above were
able to extract occasional concessions.37 Protestors and opposition parties set
their critiques within the confines of established values and ideologies of the
ruling order, which made them very hard to disavow.38 These forms of “rightful
resistance”39 won key victories, including increased participation in ostensibly
democratic forums, discounted heating oil and the preservation of wheat and
barley subsidies.
Despite these sporadic victories, the last two decades have negatively altered
the living standards of Jordan’s poor and middle classes. Far from shielding
them from the worst effects of austerity by way of private sector jobs, new busi-
ness opportunities and access to financial tools, neoliberalization has wors-
ened their plight.40 In the midst of booming service, construction and military
sectors, inequality and poverty levels have worsened. Although official wages
might be growing, employment is uncertain, and while taxes are compara-
tively modest, they remain regressive. The privatization of public companies,
de-regulation of markets and implementation of free trade agreements have
undoubtedly created new opportunities, but these have mainly benefitted a
coterie of elites with close ties to the Palace.41 Within this context of increasing
inequality, social policy has seen a shift towards targeted anti-poverty schemes
and cash transfers championed by international financial institutions. I nitiated
36 Curtis Ryan, “Peace, Bread and Riots: Jordan and the International Monetary Fund,” Mid-
dle East Policy, 6:2 (1998): 54–66.
37 John Chalcraft, Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2016), 532; Larbi Sadiki, “Popular Uprisings and Arab Democ-
ratization,” International Journal Middle East Studies, 32:1 (2000): 71–95.
38 José Ciro Martínez, “Leavened Apprehensions: Bread Subsidies and Moral Economies in
Hashemite Jordan,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 50:2 (2018): 173–193; José
Ciro Martínez, “Jordan’s Self-fulfilling Prophecy: The Production of Feeble Political Par-
ties and the Perceived Perils of Democracy,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 44.3
(2017): 356–372.
39 Kevin J. O'Brien and Lianjiang Li, Rightful Resistance in Rural China (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006).
40 Najib B. Hourani (2014) “Neoliberal Urbanism and the Arab Uprisings: A View from Am-
man,” Journal of Urban Affairs, 36:s2 (2014): 650–662; Eliana Abu-Hani, “Neoliberalism as
a Site-Specific Process: The Aesthetics and Politics of Architecture in Amman, Jordan,”
Cities, 60:A (2017): 102–112.
41 Anne Mariel Peters and Pete W. Moore, “Beyond Boom and Bust: External Rents, D urable
Authoritarianism, and Institutional Adaptation in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,”
Studies in Comparative International Development 44:3 (2009): 256–285; Abu-Hani,
“Neoliberalism as a Site-Specific Process,” 102–112.
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during the early 1990s, these programs have expanded under King Abdullah ii.
Inadequately funded and administratively disjointed, observers have criticized
these programs for their inability to reach all those in need, or to provide any-
thing beyond basic assistance to the approximately 20 percent of the poor they
successfully reach.42 The re-structuring of the country’s welfare system paid
little heed to the exigencies of its labor market, which is highly dependent on a
service sector in which employment is seasonal, intermittent, and, quite often,
informal.43 As a result, poor, working and middle-class sectors of society not
connected to the military have been left to cobble together social welfare from
ngos, charities and kin mutual aid associations.
One key consequence of this reconfiguration is the increased vulnerability
of poor and working classes to inflation and increases in the prices of subsis-
tence goods. As Asef Bayat argues, this has caused a shift in popular needs
and demands, not just in Jordan but also throughout the Middle East.44 Past
struggles over wages and working conditions, the typical demands of trade
unionism, have lost ground in favor of broader concerns related to issues of
urban collective consumption—housing, electricity, water and food. Subsi-
dized bread lies at the intersection of these developments. It is one of the few
Jordanian welfare programs that have survived the erosion of social provisions
that characterized the pre-austerity social contract and continues to represent
a crucial hedge against inflation and volatile food markets for residents of the
country. Yet the foodstuff’s importance transcends its financial value or nu-
tritional properties; it is a cornerstone of urban and rural diets, a subsistence
good through which feelings of groupness and community are (re) produced.45
Similar to corn in Mexico or the baguette in France, khubz ‘arabī serves “as a
centerpiece of daily ritual and social interaction,”46 one that lies “at the core of
both the material and symbolic organization of everyday existence.”47
Broadly popular and consistently defended, the bread subsidy also under-
girds one of the most consequential and recurring encounters of ordinary
42 Baylouny, Privatizing Welfare, 75–78.
43 Baylouny, Privatizing Welfare, 78.
44 Asef Bayat, “Activism and Social Development in the Middle East,” International Journal
of Middle East Studies 34:1 (2002): 1–28.
45 Wendy Wolford, “Families, Fields, and Fighting for Land: The Spatial Dynamics of Con-
tention in Rural Brazil,” Mobilization, 8:2 (2003): 157–172; Erica Simmons, Meaningful
Resistance: Market Reforms and the Roots of Social Protest in Latin America (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2016).
46 Simmons, Meaningful Resistance, 9.
47 Steven L. Kaplan, The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Question, 1700–1755 (Durham, nc: Duke
University Press, 1996).
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c itizens with the state apparatus—which seeks to meticulously control the
production, distribution and consumption of khubz ‘arabī. Yet this very mo-
nopoly periodically engenders inequitable outcomes, including neighbor-
hoods where demand outstrips supply or vice versa.48 In response, bakers and
ordinary citizens employ various tactics so as to guarantee provision and en-
sure subsistence. Notwithstanding laws, regulations, sporadic edicts and rou-
tine inspections through which the bread subsidy is enacted, state strategies of
regulation continuously produce their “own defiant outside.”49
Jabal B: Bribing for Subsistence
Apart from Fridays, when the bakery opens after the weekly prayer, the routine
at Hani’s locale is unwavering. Lunch plans vary, friends or spouses occasional-
ly come by for brief conversation, fortnightly government inspections trigger a
brief stoppage but during work hours, habits rarely fluctuate. Except for Satur-
days between four and five in the afternoon. At this time, an acquaintance that
I initially did not recognize arrives without fail. During my first weeks working
at Hani’s, his weekly stopover caused an unease I could not grasp. Around thir-
ty minutes before his expected arrival, Hani would take the old cigarette carton
that functioned as the cash register into the backroom. He would emerge edgy
and apprehensive, pace around nervously until the visitor appeared. The visi-
tor skillfully managed the entire episode. He came in quietly, nodded at Hani,
spent a few minutes whispering with him out of earshot in the backroom be-
fore walking briskly out of sight. In less than five minutes he was gone, folded
bills tucked eagerly into his pocket.
Fahed was one of three moits employees charged with overseeing bakeries
in East Amman. Following his fifth Saturday visit, I realized who he was, his
casual dishdasha (kaftan) a stark contrast to his workweek attire of slacks and
a buttoned down shirt. I had seen him during the routine inspections moits
staff undertook at the bakery twice a month. After two months at Hani’s, I de-
cided to ask the workers about the purpose of his visit. “Fasād (corruption),”
48 For one recurring example, see Dana Al Emam (2015) “Bakery Owners Expect Produc-
tion Slowdown in Eid over ‘Flour Shortage’,” Jordan Times 29 June, http://www.jordan
times.com/news/local/bakery-owners-expect-production-slowdown-eid-over-flour
-shortage%E2%80%99.
49 Finn Stepputat, (2013) “Contemporary Governscapes: Sovereign Practice and Hybrid Or-
ders Beyond the Center,” in Local Politics and Contemporary Transformations in the Arab
World, ed., Malika Bouziane, Cilja Harders and Anja Hoffman (London: Palgrave Macmil-
lan, 2013), 31.
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one worker told me, “ma fesh ghayru” (there is no alternative).” I asked them to
explain but they demurred, probably uneager to share their employer’s busi-
ness with an outsider whose presence they found puzzling. A month later, the
routine still unchanged, I asked Hani about Fahed’s visits. “Al-daf‘a qabel al-
raf‘a (pay to play),”50 he stated jokingly, brushing my inquiry off. After work
ended that evening, Hani asked me to stay and offered to discuss my query.
“As you can tell, we barely have enough bread for all our customers,” Hani
relayed after a few pleasantries, “and this has only gotten worse over the past
three years.” I nodded in agreement, as he went on to detail the various occa-
sions on which he had requested an increase in his flour quota from moits to
no avail. “Every time they say no. We either do not have the baking capacity,
or enough customers, or some other excuse,” he stressed. Hani then detailed
how, for many of the neighborhood’s residents, survival or modest levels of
subsistence would not be possible without the subsidized foodstuff they are
able to purchase at his bakery, a reality that drove him to take the steps I had
witnessed. He then expounded on the bribe itself, describing Fahed as an “old
friend with a pure heart (qalbu abyad),” who understood “the situation,” as
he lived in a nearby neighborhood. Irritated by the Ministry’s intransigence,
which he traced to the neighborhood’s majority Palestinian population, sup-
port for Islamists and acute poverty, Hani had asked Fahed to arrange for sup-
plementary deliveries of subsidized flour. He purchases at black market rates
that leave him minimal profits but ensure he has enough to stay open thirteen
hours a day.51
Hani professes to run his business in accordance with Islamic prescrip-
tions, practicing commerce through a higher order of ethics characterized
by modesty, thriftiness and abstention from superfluous profits. These traits
were exemplified in his decision to pay higher wages to his workers and sell
only subsidized bread, made strictly from discounted flour. During lengthy
workdays, he would often cite a hadith (prophetic saying): “He is not a believer
whose stomach is filled while his neighbor goes hungry.” When describing his
50 Literally, this phrase means to pay before you raise. What exactly is being raised is pur-
posely left ambiguous. This phrase is used in various idiomatic sayings. One is common
to public protests, in which demonstrators request payment (symbolic, or in the way of
a material transfer) before price increases. In the context in which it is uttered here, it
is analogous to a common expression I heard used by single young men, in which you
must pay (al-daf‘a) before (qabal) raising (al-raf‘a), a women’s skirt (often in reference to
a prostitute). An alternative translation would be to pay in advance. I have chosen “pay to
play,” as I feel it is the most accurate rendition in this context.
51 Most purchases of subsidized flour on the black market are destined to the production of
sweets and biscuits with higher profit margins than standard khubz ‘arabī.
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business, he portrayed the bakery not simply as a workplace or profit source
but as a sphere for moral yet effective economic purpose, a principled alterna-
tive to what he termed a nationally compromised state of affairs. Many local
residents similarly described the bakery as a place somehow removed from the
vicissitudes of the free market. “I feel safe at Hani’s,” one regular customer who
I often conversed with explained, “The prices do not change. It is the one time
in the day when I purchase something without pondering my budget or the
difficulties of making ends meet.” His cousin Rashid, an employee at a nearby
sandwich shop, similarly affirmed his attachments to place: “Hani makes mon-
ey,” he reasoned, “but his bakery is not a regular business, just concerned with
profit. We all feel like it is fixed part of our hayy (neighborhood). The owner
cares for the customers, who rely on his bread to live.”
Of course, Jabal B’s residents are aware of the broader socio-spatial strate-
gies that marginalize them; they are under no illusions about how or for whom
the city works. Few of those I met had very radical positions, although many
used religious ethics and modes of expression as a way to criticize an ostensibly
rigged economic and political system seen to be led by corrupt elites.52 Their
feelings of estrangement emerge from a sense that those in power work with a
different set of values than their own, dedicated to profit-seeking capitalist op-
erations rather than the public needs of the city’s inhabitants. Yet when faced
with the slow erosion of their livelihoods, they invoke a language of connec-
tion, sentimentality and mutual dependence, attached to a densely affective
place. They describe the bakery, much like Hani, as a site of pragmatic materi-
ality, a node of nurturance that defies logics of “capital surplus absorption”53
that increasingly prevail in Amman. While many residents knew of or could
surmise the extent of black-market operations that made Hani’s bread-baking
possible, his noble aims coupled with widespread suspicion of the government
not only precluded disapproval but garnered praise amongst his customers.54
52 While exploring the use of Islamic vocabularies is beyond the scope of this paper, various
scholars have analyzed how religious frames are mobilized to critique prevailing politi-
cal and economic arrangements. Cihan Tuğal, “Transforming Everyday Life: Islamism and
Social Movement Theory,” Theory and Society, 38:5 (2009): 423–458; Charles Tripp, Islam
and the Moral Economy: The Challenge of Capitalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006); Yael Navaro-Yashin (1998) “Entrapped Between Categories: ‘East’, ‘West’ and
the Practices of Consumption of Turkish Islamists,” Sociologus 48:1 (1998): 1–16.
53 David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, and the Crises of Capitalism (London: Profile Books,
2010), 26.
54 Tacit knowledge of Hani’s weekly bribe resembles what Taussig describes as a “public se-
cret,” widely known but not spoken about publicly. Michael T. Taussig, Defacement: Public
Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1999).
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A state of generalized corruption appeared to justify lesser illegalities. “We
appreciate this place,” relayed one technician from a nearby garage who al-
ways purchased provisions for lunch, “We are thankful the owner does what
he must to make our subsistence possible.” Hani’s success is judged neither by
profit margins nor victories in a normative political sphere but rather by his
deft management of what remains an extra-legal arrangement that, despite its
criminalization, is not necessarily illegitimate.55
This baker’s business practices, especially his extensive opening hours and
disinterest in engaging in other retail trades (sweets, expensive varieties of
bread), are widely commended by local residents. Many described him as an
exemplary business owner and generous man (rajul karīm). Yet to ensure his
bakery’s success, Hani must cultivate social relations not only with Jabal B’s
residents but also with ministry officials, negotiating fields of power as well
as precise combinations of flour, water and salt. To do so, Hani asserts an ab-
stract right to subsistence while paying a bribe to ensure its fulfillment. He
adheres to governmental regulations but with a crucial transgression. His bak-
ery exemplifies modes of economic action that evade the strict logics of the
market while promoting an “ethics of care” for the community.56 His everyday
practices signal alternative modes of exchange that must navigate governmen-
tal regulations in order to manipulate them, all while responding to moral
concerns and physical needs. Of course, his self-recognized ability to circum-
vent regulations does not mean he has overcome the system or secured his
long-terms interests in perpetuity. He remains open to harassment, enforced
closure or onerous fines. What Hani’s business practices do illustrate is how
the moits’s attempts to impose abstract spatial grids inevitably encounter an
urban landscape entangled in social relations, urban livelihoods and moral
economies. Hani’s purposeful navigation of government regulations, here
seen in the unofficial purchase of subsidized flour from a ministry employee,
and the world of relations that give meaning to these dynamics, constitute
the terms by which Hani disrupts the state’s regulatory techniques without
challenging its order outright. This is the limber terrain on which government
interventions and welfare policies are worked out. While state strategies may
work through fictions of fixity, they always struggle with the ambiguities of
tactical micro-practices.
55 Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria, “Ordinary States: Everyday Corruption and the Politics of Space
in Mumbai,” American Ethnologist 38:1 (2011): 67.
56 Moya Kneafsey et al., Reconnecting Consumers, Producers and Food: Exploring Alternatives
(Oxford: Berg, 2008).
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Jabal C: Sweetening Lives
Jabal C is a lower-middle class neighborhood near Amman’s historic city cen-
ter. It covers an area of 4 square kilometers and houses approximately 55,000
residents. The quarter began as an extension of a nearby Palestinian refugee
camp in the early 1950s, but has expanded steadily. It is now a bustling commer-
cial district. Local inhabitants work predominantly in the service sector. Small
shopping malls, independent clothing shops, medical clinics, restaurants and
other food purveyors are scattered throughout the neighborhood. While some
families in the community are poor, most are lower or middle-class. Despite
the disposable income and savings many possess, economic wellbeing is far
from secure. Rising food and real estate prices are a source of constant worry
and anxious conversation. I spent much of my time in Jabal C at al-Rīf, one of
six bakeries in this sub-district of Amman. In addition to standard khubz ‘arabī,
al-Rīf sold non-subsidized khubz ash-shrāk,57 a crucial ingredient the Jorda-
nian national feast dish mansaf,58 and an array of sweet biscuits (ka‘k) that are
usually dipped in tea (see figure 1). The latter, which come in various shapes
and flavours, sold very poorly, a constant source of frustration for the bakery’s
owner. Confident of the quality of his ka‘k, he blamed dubious machinations at
Samir’s, one of three nearby bakeries, for his bad luck.
After leaving work at al-Rīf, I would often wander around the neighbour-
hood, shop for household supplies or join friends for coffee. One day, my
curiosity piqued, I went to examine Samir’s baked goods. The reasons for his
success selling biscuits quickly became apparent. Samir’s ka‘k cost, on average,
around half the price of its equivalents at other bakeries. My sponsor at al-
Rīf, wholly unsurprised by my finding, explained how this drastic markdown
was achieved. He surmised that Samir made private use of a public resource
by concealing its subsidized origins. He did so by shrewdly mixing subsidized
flour (al-Muwahhad), with the non-subsidized variety (zero) typically used
for biscuits (see figures 2 and 3).59 As the former cost one-seventh the price,
Samir could sell ka‘k at a dramatically lower price than his competitors while
57 A large sheet of unleavened bread, it is far thinner and more difficult to prepare than
khubz ‘arabī.
58 For more on mansaf, see Sally Howell, “Modernizing Mansaf: The Consuming Contexts of
Jordan's National Dish,” Food & Foodways,11:4 (2003): 215–243.
59 Varieties of flour are distinguished by their extraction rate, the amount of bran and germ
left in the flour after milling. Al-Muwahhad has a 78% extraction rate, while other variet-
ies typically lie somewhere between 55–68%.
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Figure 1 Varieties of ka‘k
retaining a considerable profit margin.60 Al-Rīf’s owner accused Samir of
“iḥtiyāl (fraud),” cheating both the government and his customers, who either
could not tell the difference, or did not care given the price. His protestations to
ministerial officials were frequent and heated. Partly due to such complaints,
I was told that Samir’s bakery had been shut down on various occasions. Yet it
always re-opened the next day, a product of his connections at the Ministry,
al-Rīf’s owner inferred. The story was more complicated.
I eventually met Samir through a common acquaintance at the Bakery Own-
er’s Association (boa).61 He proved a stark contrast to the scheming caricature
described at al-Rīf. Exuberant and cheerful, his energy is infectious, a smile
never too far from his face. His public self-presentation was that of a devout,
God-fearing businessman, traits reflected in his place of business. His bakery
was filled with Quranic suras, a sign behind his cash register read: “Ahemiyyat
al-khubz yāti min al-Islām (The importance of bread comes from Islam).” The
60 During most of 2013 subsidized flour cost Jordan’s bakers 35 dinars per ton ($49 usd),
while the international market price hovered around 301.5 dinars ($426 usd).
61 The boa is the professional association charged with representing the interests of bakery
owners in Jordan.
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Figure 2 Subsidized Flour (Muwahhad)
place was constantly bustling. Filled with customers throughout the day, he
supplements retail transactions with a thriving wholesale trade with nearby
hotels and restaurants. When explaining his success, Samir emphasized the
social networks he had accumulated. He forges links with other merchants
in activities such as raising money for local charities. On three separate eve-
nings during Ramadan, I witnessed Samir and his business associates organize
Mawa’id al-rahman (tables of the Merciful), public banquets during which the
poor are given food to break their fast, outside of his bakery. In addition to ac-
cumulating valuable symbolic capital, the social dimension of these acts helps
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Figure 3 Non-subsidized flour (Zero)
develop ties between benefactors and recipients, which Samir would draw upon
in key moments. Customers who I asked spoke of him highly, as did neighbour-
ing business owners, who appreciate the footfall his bakery generates. When I
eventually asked him about his ka‘k prices, he was surprisingly forthcoming.
Before 2008, flour was universally subsidized, he recounted a ccurately, the
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new legislation caused a huge price rise in all wheat-based goods except khubz
‘arabī.62 While Samir saw no reason why croissants or fancy baguettes should
receive government support, ka‘k was different. “Cheap ka‘k to dip with tea is
hardly a luxury,” he stressed, “Enjoying these little pleasures offers a moment
of respite during the long workday, or a small indulgence for poor families who
could afford little else.” And crucially, his customers agreed.
During my time living in Amman, Samir’s bakery was closed on two occa-
sions. Following complaints from anonymous members of the public, moits
officials would arrive and inspect the extraction rate of various flour sacks
and the quality of his baked goods. When inconsistencies were suspected,
a moits official would meticulously catalogue their findings and take back
samples to the head office for further inspection. After a weekly meeting at
the Ministry in which violations were discussed, a committee would decree
a temporary suspension in subsidized flour deliveries and issue a modest
fine.63 Samir’s response to this government intervention is tactical. He shuts
his shop the same afternoon the decision is issued and posts a placard outside
his business blaming the Ministry for the bakery’s closure. That evening, he
mobilizes his networks for a protest. The following day, a crowd gathers on the
street and sidewalks outside the bakery to the tune of various slogans revolv-
ing around bread. Hawkers, restaurants employees and off-duty construction
workers in the vicinity were the main participants in the two protests I wit-
nessed. Police had been notified of the gathering ahead of time and casually
stood amongst the protestors. I watched uncomfortably as Samir approached
them. He listed his complaints and explained the reasons for the protest. His
remarks emphasized bread’s importance to the community, how the penalties
endangered local residents’ access to a key subsistence good: “Our survival is at
stake (hayātuna ‘ala-l-miḥak)” and “our existence is in danger (istimrāriyatuna
fi khatar)” were phrases he used repeatedly. Samir concluded by animating the
crowd, which was now energetically waving loafs of bread.
To my surprise, the police were apathetic; two officers were holding back a
smile. Notwithstanding the public spectacle, interactions with protestors were
affable, even affectionate. The conversation that followed Samir’s remarks
showed that their concern was not with the substance of his demands but with
the logistics of the protest. Police officers explained that their job was to avoid
62 Samir’s account is confirmed by various reports published at the time. For details on the
2007 reform, see Ala al-Furwati (2007) “Darabka fi al-makāhbiz wa ghaḍab fi al-shāri‘a b‘ad
raf‘a al-d‘am ‘an al-ṭaḥīn,” As-Sijil 2 (15 November), http://www.al-sijill.com/sijill_items/
sitem86.htm.
63 This information is based on thirty-four interviews with various employees of the Minis-
try of Industry, Trade and Supply, conducted between October 2013 and December 2015.
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traffic build-ups and violence amongst protestors. Much like the hawker pro-
tests Anjaria documents in Mumbai, remonstrations outside Samir’s bakery
were “no dramatic challenge to authority but a cordial encounter.”64 This was
neither a spontaneous expression of communal anger nor a typical opposi-
tion-led political rally, but a tactical medium used to communicate local griev-
ances. Samir did not seek to contest or de-legitimize the Hashemite regime,
which he openly supports and praises, but to mobilize the state apparatus to
serve particular ends.65
Once the press arrived, the gathering quickly dissipated. Demonstrators
slowly dispersed and Samir huddled for a round of press interviews, some of
which appeared in the nightly news or the next day’s newspaper. As Samir re-
counted, by seven or eight that evening he would receive a phone call from the
liable Ministry official, who would duly inform him that the penalties imposed
had been rescinded. “For the Ministry, it is not worth the bother,” he told me
with a smile, “their job is to stay out of the news, they must have received twen-
ty angry phone calls from powerful people yesterday.” Knowing this, Samir cho-
reographed a protest to try and produce a desired outcome: he would notify
the police, tipoff the press, who would make an appearance and transmit to
the broader public the complaints aired in Jabal C. His success in having the
fines annulled was not worked out in a juridical realm of rights or laws but in a
domain grounded in everyday practices and relations.66 It is here, in this inter-
stice, that the legitimacy of counterfeit ka‘k is determined. Even though Samir’s
ka‘k remains illegal, his tactical response to moits penalties produces extra-
legal recognitions of his baking practices. His success illustrates how navigat-
ing government regulations involves not only balancing extraction rates and
subsidized flour quotas but proficiency in “negotiating dense networks of me-
diation” that include Ministry officials, elected politicians and reliable custom-
ers.67 The morning after the protest, Samir’s bakery was open and humming as
usual. Governmental grids are always subject to tactical manipulations, forms
of agency and inventiveness that make precarity livable.
I was struck by this event because of what it reveals about the possible
kinds of engagements citizens have with state institutions. Through his astute
64 Anjaria, The Slow Boil, 126.
65 Lisa Mitchell, “‘To stop train pull chain:’ Writing Histories of Contemporary Political
Practice,” Indian Economic & Social History Review 48:4 (2011): 469–495.
66 Anjaria “Ordinary States,” 85; AbdouMaliq Simone. City life from Jakarta to Dakar:
Movements at the Crossroads. London: Routledge, 2010.
67 Lisa Björkman, “The Ostentatious Crowd: Public Protest as Mass-Political Street Theatre
in Mumbai,” Critique of Anthropology, 35:2 (2015): 142–165.
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